Abstract:

The article considers the process of formation of the Cossack population of the South-Eastern Kazakhstan (Semirechye) in the XIX – early XX centuries focuses on the changes in the number of Cossacks in the region and the factors influencing this dynamic. The history of Cossack settlements on the territory of Semirechye and their localization is considered in detail. The beginning of the formation of the Cossack population of Semirechye refers to 1830. From the middle of XIX to the early XX centuries, its number is continuously growing. This growth was initially provided mainly by the resettlement of Cossacks from other regions and the enrollment of soldiers and peasants in the Cossacks. Since the 1870s, the growth of the number of seven-river Cossacks was almost only due to the natural increase. Some slowdown in the growth rate of the Cossack population of Semirechye was due to underestimation of the importance of Cossack colonization by the leadership of the country and the region in the 1870s-1880s, the First world war and the Turkestan uprising of 1916.
At the beginning of the XX century., as a result of the Civil war and the policy of telling the bulk of the Cossacks Semirechye was destroyed physically, a significant part fled to neighboring States, and the remaining merged with other social groups.
The result of the work is a statement of the continuous growth of the number of the Semirechensk Cossacks throughout the existence of this social group, up to the termination of its existence in the early 1920s.